Livefyre Profile

Activity Stream

Great points! There are even more advantages to remote team members. For example: If you want the very best people, then you shouldn't limit yourself to the subset of candidates that are in your area, or who are only interested in working in an office.

Another big win for remote work is that it's an automatic test of competence. It's much easier to look busy and play politics if you're in the same office. But remote team members either get things done--or they don't.

It's hard to imagine a situation where remote work would be possible, but isn't advisable. Ultimately, if you're more interested in results than in control, more focused on producing value rather than distrusting employees, you should consider respecting them enough not to try and dictate when and where they work.

"Earned media" is placements that the audience thinks are organic, but are actually the work of skilled PR experts. What we should call it is "lobbied media." But that wouldn't sound as nice.

We might also call earned media by the name "paid media", since you have to pay your copywriter to produce it and your PR pro to get it placed. But we already have the word "paid media" for advertisements. Both require payment: the difference is who gets paid.

Nevertheless, earned media is incredibly effective, because the audience <em>thinks</em> it came about because an editor or journalist dug out the story. This is unlike paid (advertised) media, which the audience <em>knows</em> is bought. That's why it's less effective.

Great thoughts, Chris! Any time an email comes back as a "hard bounce", I see it as an opportunity to find out what life event happened for the company and for the recipient. And that chance to reconnect always helps strengthen the relationships.

I really don't like comments on blog posts. To me it seems like an inelegant way to carry on the conversation. If I want to respond to your post, I should do so with a post of my own, on my own website. That way there can be no question about whether or not you are censoring anyone. And there's no limitations with regard to formatting, length or capabilities. And finally, my comment is not then lost in a sea of other comments.

Email is the number one technology-centric productivity problem at the office. In fact, we have a whole series of workshops around email that are designed to radically change your perspective on email so that you can get more done.

An empty inbox is part of the process---but what is more important is to train other people through your own email behavior. The WORST thing you can do is respond to an email instantly. That teaches individuals to think you are always available.

Instead, you should respond to emails AT LEAST four hours later, if not the next day. That forces people to call you if they need you (which is hard to do) or try to find the answer themselves. It gives you time to deal with real work, which happens outside of email.

Email is killing us because we use it for EVERYTHING, INSTANTLY. If we only used email for meaningful, non-urgent interaction and didn't try to store our entire lives in a folder system, we'd find ourselves able to get so much more done.

@JustHeather The reason you feel left out is not because you're not awesome. (News flash: You're awesome. Feel free to print this out if you need a later reminder.)

No, the reason you feel left out is because you don't understand <em>why</em> they picked the 46 that they did.

Had they said something like: "We're going to try to pick a diverse range of people to represent Indianapolis. We may have a lifestyle blogger or two, we might have a PR pro, and perhaps some random people who are just enormous football fans."

<blockquote>companies and organizations should be required to publicly state how they determine who to include in outreach programs.</blockquote>

Well, you're putting words into her mouth. Here's what I think she's trying to say. But more importantly: I believe it (although I have done a bad job of trying to explain it to @chuckgose@kyleplacy@indymike@cjtheisen and others in the past)

<blockquote>If you're going to select a handful of people to participate in an exclusive public program, everything will go more smoothly if you define and publicize your selection criteria and your objectives well in advance.</blockquote>

<em>Of course</em> companies can do whatever they want (FTC disclosure requirements notwithstanding). But for some reason, people who organize contests and promotions seem to think that the public isn't going to want to know how they decided to pick the winners!

So what are the takeaways?

1. Want massive public appeal for an exclusive opportunity? Help ensure the crowd doesn't turn on you by explaining your approach and rationale for the exclusivity. That's just common sense.

2. The bigger the event, the farther in advance you need to plan it. We should have been working on selecting the Social 46 perhaps a year ago. Even if they organizers had made the same blunder back then, at least we'd mostly be over it by now.

@ginidietrich@KimDavies Then I guess it's a matter of definition, because most of those (and all of them, if you count internal audiences as a public) sound to me like "publicity. " Wikipedia says that "publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject."

I know that's a rather sharp way of putting things, but I'm looking for an aspect of PR that *doesn't* have as its primary objective the intent to manage perception. I think that the reason people are confused about PR---and the reason they foolishly associate 95% of bad social media campaigns to PR agencies---is they think that PR agencies are willing to take ethically questionable actions in their pursuit of perception management.

I feel like everything I've ever known a PR professional to do falls under the heading of managing public perception. That's just fine! That's the reason clients hire PR firms! The question is *how* PR pros do this work. Some (most!) are very ethical and professional. A few aren't. Enough bad things happen to inspire ridiculous "95% statements" and here we are.

Most of work in environments in which there are no work-related emergencies. If you're a surgeon or a firefighter, this isn't the case, but if you operate in almost any office environment than there's no such thing as a work-related emergency. In these situations, any potential critical event is a personal crisis. If you or a loved one experiences an emergency while you are at work, the answer is obvious: leave work!

The most important (and most often overlooked) aspect of an effective to-do list is to ensure that every task has a *start date.* That means, "I don't need to start working on this task until this start date."

This allows you to hide parts of your list that aren't urgent yet so you can focus only on what's outstanding. My list has thousands of items in it, but I only see those that are right at the top. Everything else is scheduled for the future.

That's not because I don't think you're smart. Rather, I just don't believe that your expertise is time-sensitive.

Would I pay to interrupt a top-notch crisis PR expert to get their attention to solve a problem? You bet. If I'm out at a restaurant, and my friend needs emergency medical attention--would I at least offer to buy the meal of any doctor who happened to be in the room? Certainly.

However, most of us do work which is important, but not urgent. We don't need to be interrupted.

PR is the business of communicating to the general public. If many people don't know what PR professional actually do, then there's tremendous irony that PR has such bad PR!

And if PR is not primarily a business of deception, why would people suggest that it is? Again, why does PR have such bad PR?

This is analogous to engineers working in buildings that continually collapse, doctors routinely made terrible medical decisions for themselves. PR should have fanatastic PR. That it doesn't strikes at the very heart of the profession. If PR can't address it's own image, why should anyone believe that PR pros can genuinely help the rest of us for more than the length of a news cycle?

The interesting question will be: what does it mean to do PR---especially media relations---with total integrity? If you have a relationship with a journalist that allows you to influence them, then you aren't just another source. You might be totally honest with your client and that journalist, but the general public may get different news because of your efforts. Is that bias unethical?

Furthermore, doesn't your ability to write impact my ability to fairly judge the intelligence of your clients? If you put together an op-ed piece for a client, signed by that client, doesn't it tell me that they are a great writer and potentially a good investment?

I applaud you for wanting to make the PR industry one characterized by ethics and integrity.

But, it's going to be a long road, considering that the official PRSA Code of Ethics actually suggests that members merely "avoid conflicts of interests" and "avoid deceptive practices." Seriously. And these are just *guidelines*, not policies! Shouldn't PR folks---masters of written language---pick something stronger? How about: "PRSA members shall never engage in work where there is a clear conlict of interest." How about: "PRSA members shall never intentionally decieve their clients or the public." Go read these documents for yourself:

I think that someone has to do the important work of explaining concepts to the public in a fair and positive light. This kind of language makes it easy to understand why PR has such a bad rap. And if anyone should have a good image, shouldn't it be the PR industry?

First: five minutes before an offsite appointment is ready to begin, I try to always send the other person a text that says "I'm here in the back corner! See you soon." That way they know you are on-time, and it gives them the chance to pre-emptively apologize if they are late.

This leads me to my main point: <b>the best way to deal with people who are late to appointments is to have something else productive to do while you are waiting.</b> That way, when they show up they see you are busy and have the sense that they may have inadvertantly attempted to waste your time, but you refuse to allow your time to be wasted.

An additional point is that the longer they make you wait, the more intense your tasks should be. For example, you can start out by catching up on reading or processing some email. But if they have made you wait for a full ten minutes, I suggest making phone calls. Then when they arrive, you can motion for them to sit down while you wrap up. There's no need to rush at this point, since they've already made you wait. And you can finish the call with an indirect phrase: "Hey, I need to let you go, my 3:00 appointment is here."